AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: OMINOUS RUIN — “ETERNAL”

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Apr 232025
 

(written by Islander)

After a run of short releases beginning in 2011, the Bay Area band Ominous Ruin released a debut album in 2021 via Willowtip Records, Amidst Voices That Echo in Stone, that quickly attracted a lot of enthusiastic attention. As our own DGR wrote in his NCS review, “The band’s sound is one of multiple extreme genres in all-out combat with each other, fully unloading from the hyperactive Tech Death scene even as it drains the arsenal from a very Brutal Death inspired segment as well.” But he also highlighted the even further progressions that the album included as it moved forward, becoming more labyrinthine, more ominous, more unpredictable.

And now Ominous Ruin are returning, again on the Willowtip label, with their sophomore album Requiem. No less technically impressive or brutally bludgeoning than their debut, it nevertheless represents a noticeable evolution, providing an even more expansive array of sensations and moods (including ambient and acoustic passages) in a way that makes the album even more emotionally involving — and mind-bending — than their first one.

This was evident in the first video/single off the album, “Staring Into the Abysm,” and today we have further compelling evidence in our premiere of Ominous Ruin‘s video for the song “Eternal“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BRÜKA — “ENVY THE LIFELESS”

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Apr 232025
 

(written by Islander)

Last September the Central Texas black metal band Brüka released their debut album Death’s Promise in cooperation with Khaoszophy Records and Pest Productions. Usually powered by viscerally propulsive rhythms and fronted by scalding vocal ferocity, it provides a twisting and turning experience.

At times the album provides sweeping melodic ice-storms in the vein of Dissection and Emperor, bleak and daunting but expansive, creating keyboard-enhanced soundscapes that engulf listeners, albeit with attention-grabbing bass nuances and vivid drum variations. At other times, the music attacks with barbaric savagery and monstrous death-metal roars, with maniacally boiling fretwork and earth-shaking cannonades.

At still other times, Brüka let the music extravagantly ring (and warp) like hellish and hallucinatory chimes or to become soft, mysterious, and elegantly haunting before exploding in feral and fierce attacks.

And then there’s the song “Envy the Lifeless“, which is the subject of the video we’re premiering today and a vivid sign of just how varied Death’s Promise is. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: POSTMORTAL — “DECAY OF PARADISE”

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Apr 232025
 

(written by Islander)

Funeral doom is a venerable but narrow musical niche, now old enough to be well-established and highly regarded by its adherents, but many caverns below anything that would pass as “popular”, even among most fans of extreme metal.

The signature tropes of the sub-genre are by now well-known: long song-lengths, glacial pacing, abyssal atmospheres of sprawling scale, often titanic heaviness, often monstrous vocals equally abyssal in depth. Of course there are variations: trappings of spectral elegance and haunting beauty; singing instead of growling; the occasional roaring upheavals instead of the slow, quaking pace of massed mourners or wounded giants. Sometimes you might even hear whispers of hope, like tiny moths drawn to a candle that will be found dead by morning.

Where does the Polish funeral doom band Postmortal fit within this old and deep but narrow musical crevasse? Early signs appeared in their Soil EP in 2018, but the lineup has changed since then, diminishing to the duo of lyricist/vocalist Dawid Dunikowski and musician Michał Skupień. Current signs are available in the debut album made by these two, Profundis Omnis, which re-states some of the band’s early compositions and is now set for release on May 9th by the UK label Aesthetic Death. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): STRUCTURE — “HERITAGE”

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Apr 222025
 

(written by Islander)

In the moments of silence, when we have slipped from rooms and the gaze and demands of others, we can wander through all that has been, hold the precious, present moment in our hands and weigh both our delights and despair with reasoned measure.

Those are the words that serve as a preamble to a forthcoming debut album named Heritage that we found in press materials for the album. The album, which we’re now premiering in full, is the work of a project named Structure, one established in 2021 by Dutch musician Bram Bijhout, who is perhaps best known for his guitar work with Officium Triste, whom he served for seven years.

That preamble and the album’s name (and its cover image) point toward what inspired it, as Bram has explained: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): COGAS — “AMONG THE DEAD: HOW TO BECOME A GHOST”

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Apr 212025
 

(written by Islander)

We prize extreme metal because it captures and conveys emotional intensity in more powerful ways than most other musical genres do. However, the emotional intensity of the music and vocals aren’t always reflected in lyrics. Often written after the music, the lyrics may be entirely unconnected to the experiences and moods that inspired the music; worse still, they may also be mundane, cliched, and entirely forgettable.

That kind of criticism won’t be applied to the new sophomore album by Cogas. It is rooted, both musically and lyrically, in the frustration, pain, and anger spawned by conditions in their homeland of Sardinia, the second largest island in the Mediterranean and a place of remarkable, varied beauty and rich, fascinating history, but also (based on our own reading) a place apparently plagued by high youth unemployment, enormous outflows of young people seeking to escape such conditions, and both mental and physical health problems among those who’ve remained.

Cogas themselves, who have been based in London for some time, have explained what inspired their new album Among the Dead: How to Become a Ghost: Continue reading »

A 420 VIDEO PREMIERE: OF WOLVES — “HALFTONE”

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Apr 202025
 

(written by Islander)

In celebration of today’s high holiday, and with heads bowed in the direction of the Waldos, we’re hosting a rare Sunday premiere. Blaze and praise!

What we’ve got for you is the premiere of an attention-grabbing animated video for “halfTONE“, the latest single by our friends in Of Wolves, a musically always-hard-to-pin-down but always-captivating band from Chicago whose heads and hearts always seem to be in the right place in turbulent times. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: PERCIPIENT — “PORTALS”

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Apr 182025
 

(written by Islander)

Percipient is a doom/death metal band hailing from Denver, Colorado. They tell us: “Originally formed in 2020 under a different name, the band endured a series of lineup changes and a brief hiatus before re-emerging with a refined vision. In 2022, they adopted the name Percipient — a reflection of their paranormal lyrical themes and obscure, atmospheric sound.”

As they continued finding their way, and now with a solidified lineup, they also found their voice, or rather voices, because their music has evolved in ways that, while undeniably haunting, are haunting in different ways — as you’re about to find out for yourselves.

The results of Percipient‘s work are now encompassed by an album aptly named Apparitions, which will be released on April 25th. What we have for you today is the premiere of their lyric video for the song “Portals“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BRZASK — “DER WANDERER IM RIESENGEBIRGE”

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Apr 182025
 

(written by Islander)

For reasons you will soon understand, we have learned today about the Karkonosze mountains, often called “The Giant Mountains” in English literature at least since the early 1700s. We’ve learned that it is a mountain range located in the north of the Czech Republic and the southwest of Poland, part of the Sudetes mountain system, and home to the source waters of the Elbe River.

We’ve also learned that the Karkonosze region is one steeped in dark tales and ancient traditions, haunted and harrowed by mountain spirits. And most relevant to what we’re up to today, we’ve learned that the landscapes and legends of this area provided the inspiration for the debut album of the Polish black metal band Brzask, which is set for release on May 2nd by Vendetta Records. The album’s name is Der Wanderer im Riesengebirge, and it’s the album’s fascinating and highly infectious title song we’re bringing you now. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ÖVERVÅLD — “VIGARV”

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Apr 172025
 

(written by Islander)

We’re about to present a new EP that’s a prime example of music that’s vitriolic and vicious, ferocious and vile, yet as catchy as whatever respiratory virus is now asserting its dominance over a pitiful humanity. It doesn’t play to the cheap seats — it hates you and wants to eat you alive — but even while it’s ruthlessly gutting its listeners and ravenously consuming the remains behind truly abominable vocals, it does so with a flair that’s viscerally compelling.

We’re talking about a new four-track barrage from the Swedish death metal band Övervåld (though it wouldn’t be wrong to brand the new EP “blackened death metal”). The EP’s name is Vigrav and it will be released on CD and digitally by the band on April 20th, with a vinyl edition expected in May via Seven Metal Inches Records. Here’s how Övervåld introduce it: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANOXIA — “REVEL IN SIN”

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Apr 162025
 

(written by Islander)

Unless you’re a medical professional or someone who’s been choked out you may not know that “anoxia” is a state of total oxygen deprivation within tissues or organs, an extreme form of “hypoxia” that can cause dizziness, disorientation, and permanent damage to the brain and other bodily organs.

You may have an idea why the Australian death metal band Anoxia chose that name if you heard their debut EP Languish in Suffering (the dizziness, the disorientation, the brain damage), though their music equally brings to mind the kind of organ damage caused by severe beatings.

But really, they were just getting warmed up, just beginning to explore their malevolent methods of inflicting punishment on listeners and audiences, methods that are now better perfected through their debut album Revel in Sin, as you’ll discover through today’s premiere stream in advance of the album’s April 17 co-release by Brilliant Emperor Records and Gutter Prince Cabal Records. Continue reading »

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